Genealogies are interesting things. When I was a young lad living with my grandparents, I remember being intrigued with one particular family legend—that several generations ago there had been a fortune in silver plates that was gifted to a Webber by some royal type, probably for some kind of special service rendered. As I remember the legend, this family fortune in silver plates had mysteriously disappeared but that it still existed in some vault in the old country just waiting for a Webber with the moxy to find and claim it.
Now to my knowledge there never has been a Webber who had two pennies to rub together that weren’t already spent and Grandpa and Grandma were no exception. We lived in the sticks in a small lumber camp in the British Columbia Rockies. Our house was an old false fronted store, at least 70 years old, that was provided as free housing by the sawmill owner. We weren’t hooked up to the power grid. Sometimes we had running water. And although we weren’t wanting, we certainly didn’t have much. Life was pretty much paycheque to paycheque; it was and is a family tradition.
The legend of a lost fortune in silver plates seemed pretty enchanting. Eventually someone, I think it was my aunt while she was in university, met another Webber who was interested in genealogies. She told this person about the legend of the Webber fortune in lost silver plates. It must have been like throwing gas on a fire for a genealogist.
To make a long story short, the existence of the lost silver plates was verified. Apparently they existed several generations ago, in Belgium I think. The only thing was that the fortune in silver plates had not just disappeared into a vault somewhere. Apparently the individual Webber who had them spent them and then probably died a pauper. He was a Webber after all. And now I know more about who I am and where I came from and perhaps even more about my nature … like where my ability to let the coin slither between my fingers comes from. Genealogies can reveal much, sometimes too much.
Because genealogies can reveal so much, there is much interest in genealogies today. And there was much interest in genealogies in biblical days, too. The reasons have not changed—to discover or to demonstrate who a person is connected to. This is the reason for the many genealogies in the Bible. There are two detailed genealogies for Jesus; one in Matthew and one in Luke. A comparison of these genealogies shows that they pretty much match from Abraham to David, but that there are some major discrepancies from David through to Jesus (compare Luke 3:23 – 38 to Matthew 1:1 – 16). Why is this? There are a number of possibilities, I suppose. One often touted is that the Lucan genealogy traces Jesus’ lineage actually, though not explicitly, through Mary his mother whereas the Matthew genealogy traces Joseph’s line. It is possible to infer from Gabriel’s words in Luke 1:32 that Mary was herself a descendant of David. I like that, Jesus of the line of David and Abraham through both Joseph, his step dad as it were, and through Mary his birth mother.
But to me the real interesting stuff in these genealogies is in some of the names that show up. Both Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies basically agree from David to Abraham. This means that if Luke gives Mary’s lineage and Matthew gives Joseph’s lineage, and Luke’s and Matthew’s genealogies agree from David to Abraham, one cannot write off the questionable character of relatives that appear between David and Abraham as being the skeletons in just Joseph’s closet and not really related to Jesus. The point is that from David to Abraham they really must be Jesus’ lineage in the flesh. In this time period though, the one thing Matthew does that Luke doesn’t do is that he actually lists women, four of them to be exact, and they are related to Jesus in the flesh. They are Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. Matthew Henry makes the point in his commentary, written more than two centuries before political correctness had been invented, that “…two of them were originally strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, Rahab a Canaanitess, and a harlot besides, and Ruth the Moabitess…. The other two were adulteresses, Tamar and Bathsheba.”
If the tarnished reputation of the gals is a bit of a wonder in the genealogy of Jesus, what about the reputation of the guys? The most significant of them all is King David, the archetype of Messiah. He not only joined with Bathsheba in adultery but he then conspired to kill her husband, Uriah. Uriah was one of David’s elite warriors, one of his 30 “mighty men,” one of those special men that went right back to David’s early days when he was fleeing King Saul. Uriah was obviously a war hero and faithful soldier—but he was much more than that. He was also a longtime faithful friend and a neighbour in Jerusalem. But David stole his wife and then had him killed.
All of this looking at the genealogy of Jesus, which it seems to me is a great Advent project, is to ask one question. We understand Jesus was God and human. The divine in him was 100 per cent and at the same time the human in him was 100 per cent. Knowing who God is, and knowing the humanity that courses through Jesus’ veins, the profound question is: How far did a completely Holy God have to stoop in becoming flesh and dwelling among us—in becoming Emmanuel—in becoming kin to us in order to redeem us into the family of God?
This leads me to make a supposition. I contend there are three divine screams of pain in the Christ event. One is at the cross. That one is obvious and full of wonder. One is in the human life of Jesus as he lived with all of human temptation and yet resisted it. That one is a little less obvious and causes even more wonder upon reflection. And one scream is at the Incarnation when God became flesh in Christ.
This one I tend to miss. But what about the pain that a completely Holy God had to contend with in the birth of God in the flesh of Jesus; in the Incarnation? The genealogy of Jesus prevents us from relegating this divine pain into abstract or purely theological terms. It’s right there, in the text, in real human genealogical terms. God became real human flesh, in a real human line that was riddled with real human sin. And he did it for you, for me, for the world … to save us from our sin. In the words of the Elder: “Oh, what love!”
(1 John 3).
